Comps, all grown up

[icepixie]

I just went through the reading list for the MA comprehensive exam (hahaha, and I thought Kenyon's was bad...this one's five pages long) making checkmarks by the texts I've already read. It's kind of amusing, really--there's some, but not a lot, of coverage of Old/Middle English...a ton of checkmarks for the Romantics and Victorians...somewhat fewer for early American...fewer yet, but still an almost respectable amount, for the eighteenth century...a thick flurry for all of the twentieth century...and a GIANT GAPING HOLE for the seventeenth century. BECAUSE I HATE THEM.

*sigh* I guess I know what I'll be spending this year reading. Yuck.

Comments

[rivrea.livejournal.com]

But seventeenth century means Paradise Lost and Jacobean tragedy and Restoration comedy!

That's like fantasy, gut'n'gore and Sex and the City in one handy package!

[icepixie]

That's like fantasy, gut'n'gore and Sex and the City in one handy package!

It's also ALL ABOUT CHRISTIANITY, of which I am clueless. I miss at least 3/4ths of the allusions all of those folks are making, and it would take years to steep myself in the biblical references I need to really Get It. So I do my best to ignore it.

[rivrea.livejournal.com]

Okay, I see your point. However, I imagine that this would be a little like me trying to get through Paradise Lost for the first time, while barely knowing anything about the epic tradition that's as important an influence as Christianity. An excellent critical edition of the text with lots of useful footnotes caught all these references for me.

Of course, there might not be annotated editions of the more obscure 17th-century authors, but the standard writers of the canon should have been covered. So, why do all the work yourself when diligent generations of scholars have already done it for you? :)

[icepixie]

So, why do all the work yourself when diligent generations of scholars have already done it for you? :)

Oh, believe me, when I read them, I'm all about the footnotes. I just feel that there's meaning there for believers that there isn't for me, you know? I'll take my Victorians and Moderns any day.